I haven't updated in a few days, in part because I've been mired in re-writes for a technical report being produced by a project in which I participate. It's been slow going. My colleagues write like baboons. Correcting the stylistic and grammatical errors of others has made me less inclined to create entries here.
To understand what I'm talking about, consider the following sort of problems that I ran into repeatedly while editing the technical report.
and hit yourself in the forehead with it until you are able to pass High School Senior English class.
I suppose I can't blame my colleagues too much. Not being schooled in the rigors of graduate-level paper writing as I am, they didn't have my grammarian Ph.D. advisor who left a sea of red ink on the first few papers I tried to submit for publication. Many of them also didn't learn English as a first language and given their druthers would rather write in another language.
This frustrates me at times. I'm getting a rep at work for being a good co-author on papers. This is not a bad thing, but, it means that I end up editing the writing of baboons more often than I would like. I can't claim that writing a Ph.D dissertation has turned me into the next Hemingway or Twain, but, I can claim to write text that enlightens readers more than it confuses them.
Next time you notice that the instructions for computers or other electronic gear is hard to read, remember that there's a reason for it. That's what I always try to do.
said drgeek
on 2004-05-04 at 4:13 p.m.
|
The Wayback Machine - To Infinity And Beyond